3

Leela was uncertain just how far they travelled through the endless windings and twistings of the Heligan Structure. Gradually the passageways through which their captors drove them began to be walled with planks and panels rather than simply hollowed through living wood, and finally they entered the tree-house city in the out-branches. Once or twice they crossed broad thoroughfares, and passed openings that gave glimpses into great chambers where food was being prepared, and bark-fibres turned into cloth. Sometimes they went through busy spaces where people came crowding round to watch the strangers led past. Leela heard the news passing from mouth to mouth, crackling like a brush-fire: ‘It is the Doctor! The Doctor!’ People shouted it in the wooden arcades, spreading the news to distant branches. But Aggie and her companions would not stop, just jabbed the prisoners with their wooden spears and forced them onwards.

‘They’re not very hospitable,’ the Doctor whispered. ‘But you can’t help admiring them. They’ve built this whole world out of Heligan wood. Remarkable!’

Leela thought what was really remarkable was the way he could remain so light-hearted while they were being led to whatever awful fate these tree people had planned for them. He had that grin again. She supposed it was because he had lived so long and seen so many wonders. It must grow boring after a while. Anything new delighted him.

‘I suppose your ancestors were stranded here?’ he asked, looking back at Aggie and the spearmen. They would not answer him, so he tried calling out to Ven, who was still trailing behind. ‘Space-wreck, was it? And you salvaged just one Heligan and managed to turn it into a sort of living space station … Ingenious! How long have you been here?’

‘The great tree has been the home of our people for nine hundred years,’ said Ven. ‘Yes, our ancestors were trapped here …’

‘But there was no wreck,’ said Aggie fiercely. ‘It was you who stranded us, Doctor.’

‘Really? Me? No, I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding …’ the Doctor began, but the conversation was at an end, and so was the journey. One of the spearmen opened a carved door, and Aggie shoved the Doctor and Leela through it into a big octagonal room with carved panelled walls. That side of the Heligan Structure was turned towards the sun, and leaf-dappled sunlight came dancing through a window made from a single translucent sheet of cellulose. A woman waited for them there; handsome, grey-haired, the hem of her tea-coloured bark-fibre robes brushing the floor as she rose from her seat and came forward to study the Doctor.

Aggie and her men forced him to his knees.

‘Mother,’ said Ven. ‘It is him!’

The woman frowned. ‘He is not like the carving.’

‘I saw the Blue Box,’ said Ven. ‘But …’

‘He admitted himself that he is the Doctor,’ said Aggie. ‘I shall fetch the Chairman. Justice shall be done.’

‘So you must be the Justiciar?’ said the Doctor, smiling up at the woman as Aggie left. He pointed at the chair that she had risen from; a thing of plastic and metal, quite unlike the rest of this wooden world. ‘That’s the pilot’s chair from a Wyndham-class starship, isn’t it? An antique, by the look of it …’

‘We have waited a long time for you, Doctor …’

The Justiciar’s voice was stern, but she looked troubled. All her life she had known of the Doctor. She remembered as a little girl being told by her grandmother, ‘Be good, or the Doctor will come and get you!’ But she had never really believed in him. A man who travelled through space and time in a blue box? It sounded so unlikely! She had thought he was just a symbol; a useful myth that the founders had invented to bind the people together and help them to survive in this strange place. When she was elected Justiciar she had sworn solemnly that she was ready to sit in judgement on the Doctor if he should return – but a hundred Justiciars before her had sworn that same oath, and he never had. She had never imagined that it would fall to her to deliver sentence on him.

‘For nine centuries our people have awaited their revenge,’ she said, looking into his wide, intent eyes, and wondering still if it was really him. ‘Their glorious leader, Director Sprawn, promised our forefathers that you would come one day, Doctor. He designed the Heligan Structure to lure you. An intergalactic nosy parker like the Doctor will not be able to resist such a thing, he told them. And here you are.’

‘Now what is all this about vengeance?’ The Doctor started to rise, but the spearmen forced him down again. ‘Vengeance for what? I’ve never done anything to you!’

‘Perhaps you have betrayed so many people that you have forgotten us,’ said the Justiciar.

‘The Doctor would never betray anyone!’ said Leela angrily.

‘Hush, Leela …’

‘Nine hundred years ago,’ the Justiciar went on, ‘our forefathers were colonising a world called Golrandonvar. They were from Earth. Their forest of Heligan trees was transforming the atmosphere; mining and construction operations were under way. And then you arrived in your blue box …’

‘Golrandonvar?’ asked the Doctor. ‘No, it doesn’t ring a bell, I’m afraid. But then I’ve visited such a lot of places … Did it look a bit like a gravel pit? You’d be amazed how many alien worlds look just like gravel pits …’

‘Mother,’ said Ven. ‘He saved my life. I would have fallen into the digestion chambers if it had not been for him. Why would the Doctor do such a thing?’

‘Because he is a good man!’ said Leela. ‘That is why he saved you! That is why he stopped me killing the angry girl and these curs with their toy spears! He would never let anyone be harmed who did not deserve it!’

The Justiciar looked at her.

‘I believe you are telling the truth,’ she said. ‘I believe you truly think he is good. But perhaps he has deceived you. Our people have a saying: “The Doctor is a Master of Deceit: even his smiles are stratagems.” He seemed friendly enough when he arrived on Golrandonvar nine centuries ago. But then he sided with the natives of the planet; vicious, primitive, swamp-dwelling creatures called the Thara. He helped them to rise up against our ancestors, and drive them from that promising world. One ship, that was all he left them, and just enough fuel to make it to this rock we orbit now. That is why, for all these years, we have awaited the Doctor’s return. So that he can be made to pay for what he did to us.’

‘Yet he did save my life,’ Ven said.

‘And I am grateful,’ acknowledged the Justiciar. ‘It shall be taken into account at his trial.’

The door crashed open again. Aggie stood there. Beside her was a tall old man, gaunt and fierce-eyed, his white brows bushy as an eagle owl’s. There were more people behind him; people with spears and clubs, peering nervously over one another’s shoulders for a glimpse of the Doctor.

‘There will be no trial!’ the old man boomed – his voice was nearly as rich and deep as the Doctor’s own. ‘None of your so-called justice for the Doctor, Justiciar! Have you not felt the tree-quakes? The Heligan is awake! It knows the Doctor is here, and it does not want justice. It wants revenge!’